"When did firearms become better than bows? " Topic

I have always wondered at the way that firearms were adopted despite not seeming to be as good as a long bow. I know all the stuff about how long it took to train an archer and how strong he had to be and all the rest, but it still strikes me as a retrograde step.

Anyway, leaving aside (the admittedly important issues of) training time / physical strength of the user, what was the first firearm which was a genuinely better battlefield weapon than a long bow, assuming both were in trained hands?
A bit subjective, but by 'better', I mean faster rate of fire / longer range / better accuracy or (more likely) a combination of all three.

I think it might be one introduced a lot later than a first thought would suggest.

Depends how many trained archers you have available…

Versus how many muldoons you can train to operate a boomstick.

Eric

Rate of fire – Colt pistol with 6 rounds.
All three, the pistol again.

Range and accuracy then the first rifles.

In a long arm, the winchester repeating rifle.

Bulldog, you're right, it was a retrograde, but take a look from the perspective of a ruler. I can put 100 guys with those new-fangled powder weapons in the field within 6 weeks, AND I can issue the weapon and take it back when the crisis is past. On the other hand, I can hire 10 archers, and they take their bows with them when they leave. Hmmm, 100 schlubs with no weapons when I say so, or 10 elite guys whose weapons are their own personal property. Plus the fact that the 10 archers are more expensive than producing the powder weapon and training the hand-gunners and paying them as well. I'd take the retrograde step, sine it put me in much greater control. Superiority isn't really an issue.

… but by 'better', I mean faster rate of fire / longer range / better accuracy or (more likely) a combination of all three.

… although the 'better' is more likely penetration. My impression is that because wargame approaches are as much about morale effects as physical (and are a bit anglo-jingoistic …) the penetrative power of the war bow is probably over-rated.

Phil

It's a decent enough question; but if bows were so superior in trained hands, why did peoples like the natives of North Eastern America (amongst many others) adopt the musket wholesale, even at the cost of dependence upon the Europeans for powder?

Judging the accuracy of a longbow at range when fired en-masse in battle is almost impossible. My opinion is that it probably wasn't any more accurate under those circumstances than an early matchlock.

Almost any firearm will carry further than a longbow – what effect it has at the end of that trajectory is what matters. Also effective range of a longbow against good 16th C plate is effectively nil – it won't penetrate it until the guy wearing it hacks your head off. Simple handguns may need to be a few yards away but they will penetrate it before contact.

Faster rate of continuous fire has to be the single shot breechloader, you don't need a repeater to exceed bow fire rates. Pre-loaded pistols run out after a set number of shots so are not really comparable and loading an early revolver took a long time.

Dropping out the training aspect rather slews the question but I think you elevate the status of the long bow too high. Rate of fire is only relevant as a comparable factor if the weapons are otherwise of roughly equal effectiveness.

Longer Range and Better Accuracy came together with the rifle.

Faster Rate of Fire didn't come until the magazine feed rifle.

The only person who could collect enough longbows to make a difference on the field was the ruler of England, so a comparison of musket vs crossbows might be more relevant on the continent. The Ottomans went to guns over bows earlier than the Europeans did, but more as an individual choice rather than a unit. And the native Americans went to muskets (not matchlocks) because their arrows could not penetrate European armor.

My sister was taught archery by an amazing chap who had been drafted (using the old Medieval laws) during WW2. He was trained as part of the specialist beach clearance squads, one of first ashore on D Day, ready to shoot any German guards with his steel bow while sappers worked on the beach defences. He always enjoyed telling the story of the other ships telling their battered old fishing boat "Your going the wrong way" and their suitable response. Being trained for underwater naval warfare, he was next dispatched to the desert. He took out a halftrack by shooting the driver through the viewport, his section then ran in with knives & set foire to the vehicle. No gunshot wounds, must have been an accident.

At an archery show I met an American navy SEAL who took modern compound bow as his specialist weapon. He was based on Nuke submarienes in Dunoon, Scotland.

I also met one of the early American advisers in 'Nam, who told the tale of the first chopper casualties. To save money, they'd been sent without armoured rotors (not that it made much difference) to be shot down by a simple crossbow stationed up a tree high above a valley. Shooting up, the chopper pulled the bolt down into the rotor- scratch one chopper. Then waited for the chopper to come and rescue that one-.

During the 80's, with the UK heading towards a right wing police state, I made some heavy, steel blunt arrows that would shatter kevlar shields, bodyarmour and helmets. With a modern compound I could deliver about 50g accurately up to 80yards (hitting saucer size target without site) or up to 250 yards indirect – which would put my heavy steel & fibreglass arrows thru a car, into the road surface.

The idea that a weapon system is outmoded is dangerous. medieval crossbows "outgunned" trench mortars in WW1. I once won £5.00 GBP from a major when I outshot his SRL with a £7.00 GBP fibregall bow. But he did let me choose the targets – behind a sandbag, other side of a nissen hut and getting as close to a sentry without warning him.

Experience with northern ireland served soldiers, they say that being shot at by a bow (by me, in woods), and seeing the arrow whiz past, knowing that the next one is going to hit THERE, is a lot more scary than being fired at by even a semi-automatic.

Bows fell out of favour for 2 reasons, fast firing long and recurved bows needed years of training, slow firing bows like crossbows didn't but had a slow rate of fire.

Secondly the armour employed against bows was getting ever to the point that medium and long shots were becoming ineffective.

Hand guns were slow, but easy to use and because of the force behind them didn't need to penetrate to hurt, so negating the armour advantage against bows.

The "La Bataille" board wargame series, offered a fully supported variant to their Waterloo (La Haye Sainte) game, which included Alexander the Great at the head of his Granicus army vs. Nappy.

I never played the game, but read the variant and talked to other gamers and the basic impression is that Alex and his guise had a good solid chance of winning the game about 40% of the time…two experienced gamers being engaged, that is.

"The "La Bataille" board wargame series, offered a fully supported variant to their Waterloo (La Haye Sainte) game, which included Alexander the Great at the head of his Granicus army vs. Nappy.

I never played the game, but read the variant and talked to other gamers and the basic impression is that Alex and his guise had a good solid chance of winning the game about 40% of the time…two experienced gamers being engaged, that is."

Well it's a game, in real life, if the Macedonians attacked French infantry with musket and cannon, the hellenic forces would run, from the human gods that controled fire, and had magic power that could go through their shields, and could throw big iron balls 1500 meters.

Plus, do not forget the shock value of firearms over arrows. For many natives, who fought in ambushes, raids, and skirmishes, the sparks, smoke and noise of a black powder flintlock made for a much better weapon because it was more likely to scare the enemy than a shower of arrows.

As to the tech itself, I would say by the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, or maybe a few decades earlier – sometime in the 1870s or 1880s – that firearms were better for putting more rounds on target, no matter how well a person was trained with the bow.

Don't know if it is true or not but old Ben Franklin is supposed to have suggested arming the Army with longbows instead of muskets.

Firearms were better than the bow when you could spend hours instead of years training a man to effectively use it. So probably from the very beginning once they could be made effectively and powder produced reliably.

The matter of getting armies into the field is much more important in warfare than any individual weapons system within some limits, unless that weapons system allows you to get them there.

Oldgrenadier at work has it exactly right.

There are obviously other social things happening, but Bosworth Field has a total of 21,000 participants. It is the one big battle of the campaign.
Marston Moor is a large battle with 39K+ participants, but is a battle among many theaters within the ECW.
Battle of the Boyne sits at 61k
Blenheim clocks in at 108k
Malplaquet at 161k seems to be a kind plateau in teh growth of the size of Horse and Musket battles. The rise of the firearm is tied to a huge growth in the size of Armies as Europe departs the Medieval period. While a musket armed army needs an industrial base to manufacture the powder, the ammo supply of a musketeer is pretty self contained. One guy can carry it. Archers need wagons full of properly prepared arrows. The time needed to prepare
In my 17th century skirmish rules, I give the native bows a higher rate of fire, but they have almost no chance of penetrating metal armor and a hard time penetrating a buff coat.

Bosworth Field has a total of 21,000 participants. It is the one big battle of the campaign.

Towton is by all accounts much bigger. ~60K combatants even at the lowest estimates.

Daryl Dixon says they didn't. ;)

This debate comes up from time to time, and the one thing that is never discussed is the time and effort to produce the ammunition. It seems to me that making 100 arrows is a lot more time consuming than making 100 lead bullets. Multiply this by tens of thousands of soldiers for the time period in question.

stephen

Daryl Dixon says they didn't. ;)

Who is Daryl Dixon and who did he say didn't what?

"It seems to me that making 100 arrows is a lot more time consuming than making 100 lead bullets." Indeed, and once the making of gunpowder became industrialised the logistics of supply swing hugely in favour of the gun.

The basic answer to the original question is the flintlock rifle.

Bows are still deadly weapons.
-Kle.

Stephen1162 has a very good point. Most soldiers could make their own ammunition in the field. That combined with what Old Grenadier at Work said gives you the answer.

I also think you are disregarding the training aspect a bit to cavalierly. The fact that you can put a bunch of schulbs in the field and turn them into effective shooters within the space of a month should not be underestimated. This means that if your gunners die, you can replace them quickly. Try that with trained longbowmen.

The Japanese, who had a tradition of the bow including mounted bow use going back hundreds of years went over to the gun within just a very short span. The Native Americans did the same. They saw what gunpowder could do to an armored warrior.

I tend to discount the shock and awe factor. That works the first time you encounter it, but soldiers get used to even terrifying conditions quite quickly in the field. The first time they saw guns, a native might run, but he'll remember and the next time it won't be such a shock.

I can't imagine today surviving the horrifying panic that must have set in during a gas attack, but the Tommies and Doughboys seemed to adapt to the horrors of it and soldier on.

I think shock and awe is quite overrated as a strategic impact (though timing of it can be quite effective from a tactical standpoint).

Flintlock muskets could equal the bow (long or otherwise) and percussion rifles surpassed it for effective military range and casualty production.

As for the time to train a bowman, the Ottomans could train and condition an archer to shoot accurately, and with a bow able to attain ranges that are still difficult to reach with modern archery equipment, in six weeks.

The military killer of the bow was the need to keep the archer in good enough condition to power his weapon, both disease and malnutrition stopped most archery armies in the field after a few weeks. While a musketeer was almost as effective a death's door as he was when fit and well fed.

It is all about the money honey. Read Bert Hall's "Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics".

It explains it all. Bows were much more effective for most of the musket and pike era. They were also much, much more expensive.

Joe Collins

To those who feel the question cavalierly dimisses important aspects, I completely accept that it does, and indeed mentioned that in the OP. As interesting as all those 'extras' about training and cost and supply etc are, the point of the question was simply to find out at what point in history did a trained soldier at the front armed with a fire-arm first have a significant advantage over one armed with a bow?
Would it be, for example, with the introduction of the breach-loading .577 Snider-Enfield? Or perhaps the Brown Bess? Or something earlier?

…one thing that is never discussed is the time and effort to produce the ammunition.

Not only produce but transport and store. Before modern materials arrows had to be kept dry and unstressed or the wood would warp and the fletching fall off.

… at what point in history did a trained soldier at the front armed with a fire-arm first have a significant advantage over one armed with a bow?

I think it depends on what your target is. There are folks who claim that the points used by medieval archers deformed against steel plate, and couldn't penetrate with any regularity.

If those are your primary targets, then firearms become better the instant they can. Range and rate of fire are less important.

There are folks who claim that the points used by medieval archers deformed against steel plate, and couldn't penetrate with any regularity.

And there are also those who claim the opposite. Who is right?

And there are also those who claim the opposite. Who is right?

I'm of the opinion that they both are, sort of. The same materials technology went into both the armor and the weapon, so the good quality ones would defeat the bad.

That said, I think it's more likely that the bad quality steel ended up in the arrow points because they were mass produced and expendable, while a little more effort went into the armor.

I think roughly in the 1860s. When you have breech loading rifles that can shoot further and quicker.

Daryl Dixon is a crack shot with a crossbow character in the Walking Dead.

Before modern materials arrows did indeed need to be kept dry, but so did gunpowder, and indeed gun locks as well until the development of brass cartridges.

Armour was quite frequently proofed against firearms, so it is not just a case of guns making armour obsolete. I have seen studies and demonstrations that quite easily put arrows through plate armour, and demonstrations where the plate turned arrows. Same for bullets.

As for which is or was better, that really depends on "better" for what purpose and by what criteria.

My guess is that firearms replaced bows when they became the more cost effective weapons system.

medieval crossbows "outgunned" trench mortars in WW1

A Medieval crossbow fired 8-10 10-pound high explosive shells per minute to a range of 750 yards?

I have a hard time believing this.

I too would like to know exactly how medieval crossbows "outgunned" trench mortars. I'll give the crossbow accuracy, but against troops in any kind of cover I'd would expect the mortar to fair better.

"I think shock and awe is quite overrated as a strategic impact"

It depends on the weight of firepower employed.

Significant (as in kilotons, or more, of HE equivalent) can produce very long lasting lassitude in the survivors so they essentially just surrender when overrun, or wander through the rubble for days, uninterested in pretty well anything.

This effect was most commonly seen after large scale strategic air attack or the use of nuclear weapons, although it also applied after prolonged and heavy artillery bombardment.

The Japanese, who had a tradition of the bow including mounted bow use going back hundreds of years went over to the gun within just a very short span. The Native Americans did the same. They saw what gunpowder could do to an armored warrior.

Japanese first saw matchlock firearms in 1542. By 1570, the teppo was a weapon used by the common infantryman (mixed units with 3:2 guns to bows).

That's more-or-less two generations of warriors to turn a weapon from the expensive elite to a specialist grunt, because the Japanese used 3 different specialist grunt types: long spears, pure archers, and mixed firearm/archer units.

Think about that. 30 years from the point of introduction to the point of mass use.

Some things never change, like the subject of this thread, and the weird assertions made. We do love our arguments/debates on favorite topics.

My opinion: bows and arrows, including crossbows, today, are just as deadly as ever they were, more so in fact than in the medieval age. Each weapon has its advantages in expert hands, that even the most sophisticated firearm cannot equal.

But in open battle, with masses of men, the firearm caused more carnage for the first time over bows and arrows in the 16th century. The numbers of firearms was simply overpowering. Bows were used onboard ships longer than in the field, yet firearms there too had replaced bows and arrows long before the end of the 16th century. The gunner can present a smaller target than the archer, but not the crossbowman, which is why the crossbow gets used literally centuries longer especially in the Americas. On a ship the archer is standing exposed to view whereas the gunner/crossbowman can crouch behind cover, which almost entirely negates the rate of shot advantage of the bow.

Other examples of firearm superiority can be presented. But they are all conditional, not mechanical. If we simply take the OP question as a mechanical/physical comparison of weapons only, then I agree with what others have said: the longgun did not surpass the bow and arrow in rate of "fire", range, accuracy and lethal energy until the late 19th century….

This popped up before a long time ago and there was a comparison thread between longbows and firearms .IIRC both went to firearms because the cost of training and manufacture ended up being better for firearms.
Give a few villagers bows and they could defend ok but give them firearms and you have small militia.
I do not know a time when mass production kicked in, but I would guess the later 1700s as the amount that would have been used by then could finally overtake any usefulness of bows.

Daryl Dixon is a crack shot with a crossbow character in the Walking Dead.

I think that must be the first time I've seen a historical argument supported by the views/actions of a fictional character …

I think I heard once or maybe twice from a friend weapons expert, that a rifle that could match the longbow in terms of rate of fire and accuracy only came along with the introduction of the Lee Metford in 1888 !

Margard, I posted it as a joke.

Sadly, I have seen fiction used to support historical arguments before by people who were serious about it. Usually backed up with "Author X does first rate historical research for every one of his books" which may or may not be true, but the books are still fiction not history.

It is almost as silly as seeing people use wargames rules to support historical arguments instead of the other way around.

I think I heard once or maybe twice from a friend weapons expert, that a rifle that could match the longbow in terms of rate of fire and accuracy only came along with the introduction of the Lee Metford in 1888 !

I'd have to disagree with the weapon. Either the Henry m1866 or the Winchester 1873 had as good a rate of fire as a bow, but the point stands.

Thing is, guns took much less training. I can give a city kid who's never even seen a rifle except maybe on TV an M16 and have him militarily proficient with it in 6 weeks. But it takes 16 years to grow a militarily proficient archer.

Interesting point, the archer must be in decent shape to be fully effective.

Inner Sanctum

As a ex-serving soldier half your post sounds like you have been smoking something and the other half from some bad TV programme.

If we're taking fictional characters into account, the clear answer is never, since I have it on good authority that one John Rambo took out a whole regiment of Vietnamese and their Soviet advisers with nothing more than a compound bow, a few standard and explosive arrows and a lot of well rubbed Vaseline. ;p

Lion,
I don`t mind you disagreeing or even suggesting alternatives to the Lee Metford… but it might just boil down to being a question of knowing in the first instance what the accuracy and rates of fire of all these weapon types actually were.

So many different answers and opinions.
So much depends on the region of the world.
In our TPP series "Our Place Under the Sun" about Native nations military history, we cited several sections on this subject.
Different regions had bows of different capabilities. Rate or fire, and penetration were two key factors.
Even in North America the answer will vary.
Civilized tribes with easy access to powder and shot adopted firearms quicker than more isolated or primative tribes.
Native nation military history tend to create artificial eras in the adoption of military technology. the first or earliest era is that of Pre-Columbian. Armies were mass infantry armies.
The next era is that of the HORSE. native Americans regarded the horse as more significant to the change in military tactics than the early firearms (matchlocks or firelocks). this was especially true of tribes located west of the Mississippi River. The tribes east of the river were influenced more by the firearms but remained dependent on trade of powder and shot.
The last era was the adoption of the cartridge. This allowed for powder adn shot to always be equal where the tribes were not lacking one element more than the other. The advance in cartridges also coincided with an improvement in the rate of fire among rifles.

There are a lot of reasons, but one of the most important was mass production. Longbows were not only difficult to train with, but also took a lot of time to produce them and their missiles. Fire guns, in the other hand, could be produced in mass, and, for the period, in standarized (more or less) sizes and calibers. Any government could produce handguns without needing a lot of skilled artisans -cannons were another matter altogether-. The longbows, in the other hand, needed skilled artisans. In other words, producing longbows was a labor intensive endeavor and, therefore, very expensive in time and resources.

In top of this, archers took a long time to train and needed to be kept in good shape to perform properly in the battlefield -as already pointed by other posters. Moreover, they tired relatively fast, while harquebusiers could fight optimally for longer periods of time.

Therefore, economically and logistically it made sense to invest in gunpowder weapons instead in archery.

You can also add other reasons: the development of cannons for its use on ships and against fortresses -improving metallurgy and production of gunpowder weaponry, making it cheaper to produce-; the possibility of mobilizing armies in a relatively short time; ecc.

In Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire, the use of bows was more common, but in this case it also made sense: many of their enemies were nomads and/or horsemen that could ride away from engagements in the steppe. Neither of those enemies made use of fortifications, or at least not in a significant way. To force them to engage in combat, both Russians, Polish and Ottomans needed bow armed cavalry of their own. Even them, were willing to trade their bow-armed cavalry for handgunners when fighting their Western enemies.

Moreover, they tired relatively fast, while harquebusiers could fight optimally for longer periods of time.

I suspected that this would rear its head again. No. Archers did not tire quickly, or at all for that matter. The evidence is that the "war bow" in any nation was well under the draw weight practiced with. Otherwise half-starved, sick longbowmen could not kill the French off at Agincourt. The non archers in the army were impressed that this was miraculous, but the archers themselves would have not been surprised that they could pull their "war bows". The standard draw weight, be it c. 70 lbs or 100 lbs (the jury is still out on that one), was far less than the strongest men were capable of pulling in practice or contest. In battle, they had to be able to shoot "all day" if required. Anything less than this would be risking having no archery at all after a campaign of any appreciable length and attrition….